Abraham Lincoln Book Acquisitions for 2022

Even when I’m trying to reduce the number of books in my house I end up with more. My Abraham Lincoln book acquisition total for 2022 is 34, and that number includes some books that are Lincoln-ish. You can read about past years acquisitions by scrolling through this link.

Recall that in 2021 I acquired a ton of Lincoln books that weren’t actually mine but belong to the Lincoln Group of DC. I’ve been working since then to remove them from my office through a combination of donations to Lincoln Group members and libraries. As a group, we even donated a box to an organization that supplies prisons with reading materials for those incarcerated. I still have a lot left, but I’ve reduced the pile enough to move the remainder out of my office. I’ve also removed some duplicates from my own collection. I’ll celebrate reclaiming my office table by starting a Lincoln-themed puzzle over the holidays.

Ah, but no matter how many I removed, I added more. My biggest acquisition was my own book, Lincoln: The Fire of Genius, which was published in September. Mostly the sales are from the usual booksellers – Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Independent bookstores (including the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago, with whom I did a release day video interview that you can watch here), and even places like Walmart, Target, Books-A-Million, etc. You can even find it in bookstores in Canada, the UK, Australia, and elsewhere. In addition to the stores, I acquired a few boxes of Fire of Genius for sale at in-person events. I have plenty of such events coming up, as well as recordings of past events, all of which are listed on my Media page.

One of the reasons I acquired fewer books this year was that I was not on the ALI book award review committee this year, mainly because I wanted Fire of Genius to be considered for the award. Nevertheless, I still acquired many of the key books that came out in 2022, including some by big name authors. Early in the year I purchased CNN commentator John Avlon’s Lincoln and the Fight for Peace. I enjoyed the book and to put an exclamation point on it I actually moderated a discussion with Avlon for the Lincoln Group in March. The biggest name in Lincoln books this year is clearly Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham, whose And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle topped the New York Times bestseller list. I had the privilege of meeting Meacham at a special event at St. John’s Church across the street from the White House, as well as a couple of other events. Another Jon (this was a big year for authors named John/Jon), Jonathan W. White also had a book come out that I enjoyed, A House Built by Slaves: African American Visitors to the White House. When it comes to big names in Lincoln studies, there is of course Harold Holzer, whose 2009 book The Lincoln Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Legacy from 1860 to Now has found a place on my shelves. All of these, by the way, also were signed to me by the authors. Being president of the Lincoln Group of DC and winning an award at the Lincoln Forum has its perks.

Other notable books acquired this past year include some related to my own book research topic, including Carol Adrienne’s Healing a Divided Nation: How the American Civil War Revolutionized Western Medicine and Kenneth Noe’s The Howling Storm: Weather, Climate, and the American Civil War. I also picked up The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, with Nikole Hannah-Jones as project leader. The book is a much-expanded version of the original New York Times series of essays that garnered a Pulitzer Prize despite (or perhaps because of) the raging controversy over misrepresentation/misinterpretation of the founding fathers’ motives and of Lincoln’s views on race. Hannah-Jones tweaked her lead essay in an attempt to correct unsupportable positions even as she stood by them, which unfortunately distracts from the rest of the book, which is a worthwhile, and largely fact-based, discussion of systemic racial discrimination that continues to this day.

I acquired two special books from Lincoln Group members. Ross Heller produced by Abraham Lincoln: His 1958 Time Capsule, which faithfully captures a campaign notebook he provided to a colleague in the year he ran against Stephen A. Douglas for Senate. The book adds in the intriguing history of the notebook’s travels and reproduction. The second is by Daniel R. Smith, Sr., whose Son of a Slave: A Black Man’s Journey in White America is a memoir of the life of a man whose father was born enslaved in 1863 and who sired Dan at the age of 70. Dan, who has been called the Black Forrest Gump because of how often he was a part of historical events, was a long-time member of the Lincoln Group until he passed away at the age of 90 just two weeks before the book was released. His widow Loretta Neumann, also a long time Lincoln Group member, was gracious enough to inscribe my copy of the book yesterday during the Group’s annual holiday luncheon. I’ll have reviews of both these books in the next Lincolnian newsletter.

As can be seen in the list below, my definition of “Lincoln” books is a bit fuzzier in some cases this year. Some are more Civil War-centric than specifically Lincoln, but nevertheless are Lincolnesque. Others may be more obliquely related to future book projects. One interesting book I picked up is called The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power by Jules Witcover. Published in 2014, it gives fairly short (several pages) overviews of the lives of all the vice presidents up through Biden (as VP). Some VPs became president either by the death of their predecessor (e.g., Andrew Johnson, Lyndon Baines Johnson) or future election (e.g., Nixon), but their vice presidency is often overlooked. I fortuitously came upon this book just days after deciding to look deeper into a particular VP for a likely future project. Funny how that works. And of course, I also acquired books that are not at all Lincoln-related that I do not put into my spreadsheet. The spreadsheet itself is now 1639 lines, with some of those lines being multiple volume books such as the 10-volume Nicolay and Hay series.

In anticipation of 2023 acquisitions, it’s time to make some more space on the shelves.

See the 2022 list showing author/title/publication date below my signature blurb below.

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Here is the 2022 list! [Author, Title, Date of Publication]